A History of the Moravian Church Part 20

A young man, named Sommers, roared like a dragon, and seven strong men could hardly hold him down.

"Ten thousand devils," he roared, "millions, millions of devils are about me."

"Bring Mr. Cennick! Bring Mr. Cennick!" was heard on every side; and when Mr. Cennick was brought they wanted to tear him in pieces.

At this early stage in the great Revival exhibitions of this frantic nature were fairly common in England; and John Wesley, so far from being shocked, regarded the kicks and groans of the people as signs that the Holy Spirit was convicting sinners of their sin. At first Cennick himself had the same opinion; but before very long his common sense came to his rescue. He differed with Wesley on the point; he differed with him also on the doctrine of predestination; he differed with him, thirdly, on the doctrine of Christian perfection; and the upshot of the quarrel that Wesley dismissed John Cennick from his service.

As soon, however, as Cennick was free, he joined forces, first with Howell Harris, and then with Whitefield; and entered on that evangelistic campaign which was soon to bring him into close touch with the Brethren. For five years he was now engaged in preaching in Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Wilts.h.i.+re {1740-5.}; and wherever he went he addressed great crowds and was attacked by furious mobs. At Upton-Cheyny the villagers armed themselves with a horn, a drum, and a few bra.s.s pans, made the echoes ring with their horrible din, and knocked the preachers on the head with the pans; a genius put a cat in a cage, and brought some dogs to bark at it; and others. .h.i.t Cennick on the nose and hurled dead dogs at his head. At Swindon--where Cennick and Harris preached in a place called the Grove--some rascals fired muskets over their heads, held the muzzles close up to their faces, and made them as black as tinkers; and others brought the local fire-engine and drenched them with dirty water from the ditches. At Exeter a huge mob stormed the building, stripped some of the women of their clothing, stamped upon them in the open street, and rolled them naked in the gutters.[118] At Stratton, a village not far from Swindon, the mob--an army two miles in length--hacked at the horses' legs, trampled the Cennickers under their feet, and battered Cennick till his shoulders were black and blue. At Langley the farmers ducked him in the village pond. At Foxham, Farmer Lee opposed him; and immediately, so the story ran, a mad dog bit all the farmer's pigs. At Broadstock Abbey an ingenious shepherd dressed up his dog as a preacher, called it Cennick, and speedily sickened and died; and the Squire of Broadstock, who had sworn in his wrath to cut off the legs of all Cennickers who walked through his fields of green peas, fell down and broke his neck. If these vulgar incidents did not teach a lesson they would hardly be worth recording; but the real lesson they teach us is that in those days the people of Wilts.h.i.+re were in a benighted condition, and that Cennick was the man who led the revival there. As he rode on his mission from village to village, and from town to town, he was acting, not as a wild free-lance, but as the a.s.sistant of George Whitefield; and if it is fair to judge of his style by the sermons that have been preserved, he never said a word in those sermons that would not pa.s.s muster in most evangelical pulpits to-day. He never attacked the doctrines of the Church of England; he spoke of the Church as "our Church"; and he constantly backed up his arguments by appeals to pa.s.sages in the Book of Common Prayer. In spite of his lack of University training he was no illiterate ignoramus. The more he knew of the Wilts.h.i.+re villagers the more convinced he became that what they required was religious education. For their benefit, therefore, he now prepared some simple manuals of instruction: a "Treatise on the Holy Ghost," an "Exhortation to Steadfastness," a "Short Catechism for the Instruction of Youth," a volume of hymns ent.i.tled "A New Hymnbook,"

a second ent.i.tled "Sacred Hymns for the Children of G.o.d in the Day of their Pilgrimage," and a third ent.i.tled "Sacred Hymns for the Use of Religious Societies." What sort of manuals, it may be asked, did Cennick provide? I have read them carefully; and have come to the conclusion that though Cennick was neither a learned theologian nor an original religious thinker, he was fairly well up in his subject. For example, in his "Short Catechism" he shows a ready knowledge of the Bible and a clear understanding of the evangelical position; and in his "Treatise on the Holy Ghost" he quotes at length, not only from the Scriptures and the Prayer-book, but also from Augustine, Athanasius, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Calvin, Luther, Ridley, Hooper, and other Church Fathers and Protestant Divines. He was more than a popular preacher. He was a thorough and competent teacher. He made his head-quarters at the village of Tytherton, near Chippenham (Oct. 25, 1742); there, along with Whitefield, Howell Harris and others, he met his exhorters and stewards in conference; and meanwhile he established also religious societies at Bath, Brinkworth, Foxham, Malmesbury, and many other villages.

At last, exactly like Ingham in Yorks.h.i.+re, he found that he had too many irons in the fire, and determined to hand his societies over to the care of the Moravian Church. He had met James Hutton, Zinzendorf, Spangenberg, Boehler, and other Moravians in London, and the more he knew of these men the more profoundly convinced he became that the picture of the Brethren painted by John Wesley in his Journal was no better than a malicious falsehood. At every point in his evidence, which lies before me in his private diary and letters, John Cennick, to put the matter bluntly, gives John Wesley the lie. He denied that the Brethren practised guile; he found them uncommonly open and sincere.

He denied that they were Antinomians, who despised good works; he found them excellent characters. He denied that they were narrow-minded bigots, who would never acknowledge themselves to be in the wrong; he found them remarkably tolerant and broad-minded. At this period, in fact, he had so high an opinion of the Brethren that he thought they alone were fitted to reconcile Wesley and Whitefield; and on one occasion he persuaded some Moravians, Wesleyans and Calvinists to join in a united love-feast at Whitefield's Tabernacle, and sing a common confession of faith {Nov. 4th, 1744.}.[119] John Cennick was a man of the Moravian type. The very qualities in the Brethren that offended Wesley won the love of Cennick. He loved the way they spoke of Christ; he loved their "Blood and Wounds Theology"; and when he read the "Litany of the Wounds of Jesus," he actually, instead of being disgusted, shed tears of joy. For these reasons, therefore, Cennick went to London, consulted the Brethren in Fetter Lane, and besought them to undertake the care of his Wilts.h.i.+re societies. The result was the same as in Yorks.h.i.+re. As long as the request came from Cennick alone the Brethren turned a deaf ear. But the need in Wilts.h.i.+re was increasing. The spirit of disorder was growing rampant. At Bath and Bristol his converts were quarrelling; at Swindon a young woman went into fits and described them as signs of the New Birth; and a young man named Jonathan Wildboar, who had been burned in the hand for stealing linen, paraded the country showing his wound as a proof of his devotion to Christ. For these follies Cennick knew only one cure; and that cure was the "apostolic discipline" of the Brethren. He called his stewards together to a conference at Tytherton; the stewards drew up a pet.i.tion; the Brethren yielded; some workers came down {Dec. 18th, 1745.}; and thus, at the request of the people themselves, the Moravians began their work in the West of England.

If the Brethren had now been desirous of Church extension, they would, of course, have turned Cennick's societies into Moravian congregations.

But the policy they now pursued in the West was a repet.i.tion of their suicidal policy in Yorks.h.i.+re. Instead of forming a number of independent congregations, they centralized the work at Tytherton, and compelled the other societies to wait in patience. At Bristol, then the second town in the kingdom, the good people had to wait ten years (1755); at Kingswood, twelve years (1757); at Bath, twenty years (1765); at Malmesbury, twenty-five years (1770); at Devonport, twenty-six years (1771); and the other societies had to wait so long that finally they lost their patience, and died of exhaustion and neglect.

As soon as Cennick, however, had left his societies in the care of the Brethren {1746.}, he set off on a tour to Germany, spent three months at Herrnhaag, was received as a member, returned a Moravian, and then entered on his great campaign in Ireland. He began in Dublin, and took the city by storm. For a year or so some pious people, led by Benjamin La Trobe, a Baptist student, had been in the habit of meeting for singing and prayer; and now, with these as a nucleus, Cennick began preaching in a Baptist Hall at Skinner's Alley. It was John Cennick, and not John Wesley, who began the Evangelical Revival in Ireland. He was working in Dublin for more than a year before Wesley arrived on the scene. The city was the hunting ground for many sects; the Bradilonians and Muggletonians were in full force; the Unitarians exerted a widespread influence; and the bold way in which Cennick exalted the Divinity of Christ was welcomed like a pulse of fresh air. The first Sunday the people were turned away in hundreds. The hall in Skinner's Alley was crowded out. The majority of his hearers were Catholics. The windows of the hall had to be removed, and the people were in their places day after day three hours before the time. On Sundays the roofs of the surrounding houses were black with the waiting throng; every window and wall became a sitting; and Cennick himself had to climb through a window and crawl on the heads of the people to the pulpit. "If you make any stay in this town," wrote a Carmelite priest, in his Irish zeal, "you will make as many conversions as St. Francis Xavier among the wild Pagans. G.o.d preserve you!" At Christmas Cennick forgot his manners, attacked the Church of Rome in offensive language, and aroused the just indignation of the Catholic priests.

"I curse and blaspheme," he said, "all the G.o.ds in heaven, but the Babe that lay in Mary's lap, the Babe that lay in swaddling clothes."

The quick-witted Irish jumped with joy at the phrase. From that moment Cennick was known as "Swaddling John";[120] and his name was introduced into comic songs at the music-halls. As he walked through the streets he had now to be guarded by an escort of friendly soldiers; and the mob, ten or fifteen thousand in number, pelted him with dirt, stones and bricks. At one service, says the local diary, "near 2,000 stones were thrown against Brothers Cennick and La Trobe, of which, however, not one did hit them." Father Duggan denounced him in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Lady's Letter to Mr. Cennick"; Father Lyons a.s.sured his flock that Cennick was the devil in human form; and others pa.s.sed from hand to hand a pamphlet, written by Gilbert Tennent, denouncing the Moravians as dangerous and immoral teachers.

At this interesting point, when Cennick's name was on every lip, John Wesley paid his first visit to Dublin {August, 1747.}. For Cennick Wesley entertained a thorough contempt. He called him in his Journal "that weak man, John Cennick"; he accused him of having ruined the society at Kingswood; he was disgusted when he heard that he had become a Moravian; and now he turned him out of Skinner's Alley by the simple process of negotiating privately with the owner of the property, and buying the building over Cennick's head. At one stroke the cause in Skinner's Alley pa.s.sed over into Methodist hands; and the pulpit in which Cennick had preached to thousands was now occupied by John Wesley and his a.s.sistants. From that blow the Brethren's cause in Dublin never fully recovered. For a long time they were unable to find another building, and had to content themselves with meetings in private houses; but at last they hired a smaller building in Big Booter Lane,[121] near St. Patrick's Cathedral; two German Brethren, John Toeltschig and Bryzelius, came over to organize the work; Peter Boehler, two years later, "settled" the congregation; and thus was established, in a modest way, that small community of Moravians whose descendants wors.h.i.+p there to the present day.

Meanwhile John Cennick was ploughing another field. For some years he was busily engaged--first as an authorized lay evangelist and then as an ordained Moravian minister--in preaching and founding religious societies in Cos. Antrim, Down, Derry, Armagh, Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal {1748-55.}; and his influence in Ulster was just as great as the influence of Whitefield in England. He opened his Ulster campaign at Ballymena. At first he was fiercely opposed. As the rebellion of the young Pretender had been only recently quashed, the people were rather suspicious of new comers. The Pretender himself was supposed to be still at large, and the orthodox Presbyterians denounced Cennick as a Covenanter, a rebel, a spy, a rogue, a Jesuit, a plotter, a supporter of the Pretender, and a paid agent of the Pope. Again and again he was accused of Popery; and one Doffin, "a vagabond and wicked fellow," swore before the Ballymena magistrates that, seven years before, he had seen Cennick in the Isle of Man, and that there the preacher had fled from the arm of the law. As Cennick was p.r.o.nouncing the benediction at the close of a service in the market-place at Ballymena, he was publicly a.s.saulted by Captain Adair, the Lord of the Manor; and the Captain, whose blood was inflamed with whisky, struck the preacher with his whip, attempted to run him through with his sword, and then instructed his footman to knock him down. At another service, in a field near Ballymena, two captains of militia had provided a band of drummers, and the drummers drummed as only Irishmen can. The young preacher was summoned to take the oath of allegiance and abjuration. But Cennick, like many Moravians, objected to taking an oath. The scene was the bar-parlour of a Ballymena hotel. There sat the justices, Captain Adair and O'Neil of Shane's Castle; and there sat Cennick, the meek Moravian, with a few friends to support him. The more punch the two gentlemen put away the more pious and patriotic they became. For the second time Adair lost his self-control. He called Cennick a rascal, a rogue, and a Jesuit; he drank d.a.m.nation to all his principles; he asked him why he would not swear and then get absolution from the Pope; and both gentlemen informed our hero that if he refused to take the oath they would clap him in Carrickfergus Gaol that very night. As Cennick, however, still held to his point, they were compelled at last to let him out on bail; and Cennick soon after appealed for protection to Dr.

Rider, Bishop of Down and Connor. The good Bishop was a broad-minded man.

"Mr. Cennick," he said, "you shall have fair play in my diocese."

In vain the clergy complained to the Bishop that Cennick was emptying their pulpits. The Bishop had a stinging answer ready.

"Preach what Cennick preaches," he said, "preach Christ crucified, and then the people will not have to go to Cennick to hear the Gospel."

The good Bishop's words are instructive. At that time the Gospel which Cennick preached was still a strange thing in Ulster; and Cennick was welcomed as a true revival preacher. At Ballee and Ballynahone he addressed a crowd of ten thousand. At Moneymore the Presbyterians begged him to be their minister. At Ballynahone the Catholics promised that if he would only pitch his tent there they would never go to Ma.s.s again. At Lisnamara, the rector invited him to preach in the parish church. At New Mills the people rushed out from their cabins, barred his way, offered him milk, and besought him, saying, "If you cannot stop to preach, at least come into our houses to pray." At Glenavy the road was lined with a cheering mult.i.tude for full two miles. At Castle Dawson, Mr. Justice Downey, the local clergyman, and some other gentry, kissed him in public in the barrack yard. As he galloped along the country roads, the farm labourers in the fields would call out after him, "There goes Swaddling Jack"; he was known all over Ulster as "the preacher"; his fame ran on before him like a herald; Count Zinzendorf called him "Paul Revived"; and his memory lingers down to the present day.

For Cennick, of course, was more than a popular orator. As he was now a minister of the Brethren's Church, he considered it his duty, wherever possible, to build chapels, to organize congregations, and to introduce Moravian books and customs; and in this work he had the a.s.sistance of La Trobe, Symms, Caries, Cooke, Wade, Knight, Brampton, Pugh, Brown, Thorne, Hill, Watson, and a host of other Brethren whose names need not be mentioned. I have not mentioned the foregoing list for nothing. It shows that most of Cennick's a.s.sistants were not Germans, but Englishmen or Irishmen; and the people could not raise the objection that the Brethren were suspicious foreigners. At this time, in fact, the strength of the Brethren was enormous. At the close of his work, John Cennick himself had built ten chapels, and established two hundred and twenty religious societies. Around Lough Neagh the Brethren lay like locusts; and the work here was divided into four districts. At the north-east corner they had four societies, with chapels at Ballymena, Gloonen, and Grogan, and a growing cause at Doagh; at the north-west corner, a society at Lisnamara, established later as a congregation at Gracefield; at the south-west corner, in Co. Armagh, three chapels were being built; and at the south-east corner, they had several societies, and had built, or were building, chapels at Ballinderry, Glenavy, and Kilwarlin.

At this distance of time the Brethren's work in Ulster has about it a certain glamour of romance. But in reality the conditions were far from attractive. It is hard for us to realize now how poor those Irish people were. They lived in hovels made of loose sods, with no chimneys; they shared their wretched rooms with hens and pigs; and toiling all day in a damp atmosphere, they earned their bread by weaving and spinning. The Brethren themselves were little better off. At Gloonen, a small village near Gracehill, the Brethren of the first Lough Neagh district made their headquarters in a cottage consisting of two rooms and two small "closets"; and this modest abode of one story was known in the neighbourhood as "The Great House at Gloonen." Again, at a Conference held in Gracehill, the Brethren, being pinched for money, solemnly pa.s.sed a resolution never to drink tea more than once a day.

And yet there is little to show to-day for these heroic labours. If the visitor goes to Ulster now and endeavours to trace the footsteps of Cennick, he will find it almost impossible to realize how great the power of the Brethren was in those palmy days. At Gracehill, near Ballymena, he will find the remains of a settlement. At Ballymena itself, now a growing town, he will find to his surprise that the Brethren's cause has ceased to exist. At Gracefield, Ballinderry, and Kilwarlin--where once Cennick preached to thousands--he will find but feeble, struggling congregations. At Gloonen the people will show him "Cennick's Well"; at Kilwarlin he may stand under "Cennick's Tree"; and at Portmore, near Lough Beg, he will see the ruins of the old church, where Jeremy Taylor wrote his "Holy Living and Holy Dying," and where Cennick slept many a night. At Drumargan (Armagh), he will find a barn that was once a Moravian Chapel, and a small farmhouse that was once a Sisters' House; and at Arva (Co. Cavan), he may stand on a hillock, still called "Mount Waugh," in memory of Joseph Waugh, a Moravian minister. For the rest, however, the work has collapsed; and Cennick's two hundred and twenty societies have left not a rack behind.

For this decline there were three causes. The first was financial. At the very time when the Brethren in Ulster had obtained a firm hold upon the affections of the people the Moravian Church was pa.s.sing through a financial crisis; and thus, when money would have been most useful, money was not to be had. The second was the bad system of management.

Again, as in Yorks.h.i.+re and Wilts.h.i.+re, the Brethren pursued the system of centralization; built a settlement at Gracehill, and made the other congregations dependent on Gracehill, just as the Yorks.h.i.+re congregations were dependent on Fulneck. The third cause was the early death of Cennick himself. At the height of his powers he broke down in body and in mind; and, worn out with many labours, he became the victim of mental depression. For some time the conviction had been stealing upon him that his work in this world was over; and in a letter to John de Watteville, who had twice inspected the Irish work, he said, "I think I have finished with the North of Ireland. If I stay here much longer I fear I shall damage His work." At length, as he rode from Holyhead to London, he was taken seriously ill; and arrived at Fetter Lane in a state of high fever and exhaustion. For a week he lay delirious and rambling, in the room which is now used as the Vestry of the Moravian Chapel; and there, at the early age of thirty-six, he died {July 4th, 1755.}. If the true success is to labour, Cennick was successful; but if success is measured by visible results, he ended his brief and brilliant career in tragedy, failure and gloom. Of all the great preachers of the eighteenth century, not one was superior to him in beauty of character.

By the poor in Ireland he was almost wors.h.i.+pped. He was often attacked and unjustly accused; but he never attacked in return. We search his diary and letters in vain for one single trace of bitter feeling. He was inferior to John Wesley in organizing skill, and inferior to Whitefield in dramatic power; but in devotion, in simplicity, and in command over his audience he was equal to either. At the present time he is chiefly known in this country as the author of the well-known grace before meat, "Be present at our table, Lord"; and some of his hymns, such as "Children of the Heavenly King," and "Ere I sleep, for every favour,"

are now regarded as cla.s.sics. His position in the Moravian Church was peculiar. Of all the English Brethren he did the most to extend the cause of the Moravian Church in the United Kingdom, and no fewer than fifteen congregations owed their existence, directly or indirectly, to his efforts; and yet, despite his s.h.i.+ning gifts, he was never promoted to any position of special responsibility or honour. He was never placed in sole charge of a congregation; and he was not made superintendent of the work in Ireland. As a soldier in the ranks he began; as a soldier in the ranks he died. He had one blemish in his character. He was far too fond, like most of the Brethren, of overdrawn sentimental language. If a man could read Zinzendorf's "Litany of the Wounds of Jesus," and then shed tears of joy, as Cennick tells us he did himself, there must have been an unhealthy taint in his blood. He was present at Herrnhaag at the Sifting-Time, and does not appear to have been shocked. In time his sentimentalism made him morbid. As he had a wife and two children dependent on him, he had no right to long for an early death; and yet he wrote the words in his pocket-book:--

Now, Lord, at peace with Thee and all below, Let me depart, and to Thy Kingdom go.

For this blemish, however, he was more to be pitied than blamed. It was partly the result of ill-health and overwork; and, on the whole, it was merely a trifle when set beside that winsome grace, that unselfish zeal, that modest devotion, and that sunny piety, which charmed alike the Wilts.h.i.+re peasants, the Papist boys of Dublin, and the humble weavers and spinners of the North of Ireland.[122]

CHAPTER XII. -- THE APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT, 1742-1749.

Meanwhile, however, the Brethren in England had been bitterly opposed.

For this there were several reasons. First, the leading Brethren in England were Germans; and that fact alone was quite enough to prejudice the mult.i.tude against them {1742-3.}. For Germans our fathers had then but little liking; they had a German King on the throne, and they did not love him; and the general feeling in the country was that if a man was a foreigner he was almost sure to be a conspirator or a traitor. Who were these mysterious foreigners? asked the patriotic Briton. Who were these "Moravians," these "Herrnhuters," these "Germans," these "Quiet in the Land," these "Antinomians"? The very names of the Brethren aroused the popular suspicion. If a man could prove that his name was John Smith, the presumption was that John Smith was a loyal citizen; but if he was known as Gussenbauer or Ockershausen, he was probably another Guy Fawkes, and was forming a plot to blow up the House of Commons. At the outset therefore the Brethren were accused of treachery. At Pudsey Gussenbauer was arrested, tried at Wakefield, and imprisoned in York Castle. At Broadoaks, in Ess.e.x, the Brethren had opened a school, and were soon accused of being agents of the Young Pretender. They had, it was said, stored up barrels of gunpowder; they had undermined the whole neighbourhood, and intended to set the town of Thaxted on fire. At three o'clock one afternoon a mob surrounded the building, and tried in vain to force their way in. Among them were a sergeant and a corporal. The warden, Metcalfe, admitted the officers, showed them round the house, and finally led them to a room where a Bible and Prayer-book were lying on the table. At this sight the officers collapsed in amazement.

"Aye," said the corporal, "this is proof enough that you are no Papists; if you were, this book would not have lain here."

Another cause of opposition was the Brethren's quiet mode of work. In North America lived a certain Gilbert Tennent; he had met Zinzendorf at New Brunswick; he had read his Berlin discourses; and now, in order to show the public what a dangerous teacher Zinzendorf was, he published a book, ent.i.tled, "Some Account of the Principles of the Moravians."

{1743.} As this book was published at Boston, it did not at first do much harm to the English Brethren; but, after a time, a copy found its way to England; an English edition was published; and the English editor, in a preface, accused the Brethren of many marvellous crimes.

They persistently refused, he declared, to reveal their real opinions.

They crept into houses and led captive silly women. They claimed that all Moravians were perfect, and taught that the Moravian Church was infallible. They practised an adventurous use of the Lot, had a curious method of discovering and purging out the accursed thing, pledged each other in liquor at their love-feasts, and had an "artful regulation of their convents." Above all, said this writer, the Moravians were tyrannical. As soon as any person joined the Moravian Church, he was compelled to place himself, his family, and his estates entirely at the Church's disposal; he was bound to believe what the Church believed, and to do what the Church commanded; he handed his children over to the Church's care; he could not enter into any civil contract without the Church's consent; and his sons and daughters were given in marriage just as the Church decreed.[123] Gilbert Tennent himself was equally severe.

He began by criticizing Zinzendorf's theology; and after remarking that Zinzendorf was a liar, he said that the Brethren kept their disgusting principles secret, that they despised good books, that they slighted learning and reason, that they spoke lightly of Confessions of Faith, that they insinuated themselves into people's affections by smiles and soft discourses about the love of Christ, that they took special care to apply to young persons, females and ignorant people. From all this the conclusion was obvious. At heart the Brethren were Roman Catholics. "The Moravians," said Gilbert, "by this method of proceeding, are propagating another d.a.m.nable doctrine of the Church of Rome, namely, that Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion." We can imagine the effect of this in Protestant England. At one time Zinzendorf was openly accused in the columns of the Universal Spectator of kidnapping young women for Moravian convents; and the alarming rumour spread on all sides that the Brethren were Papists in disguise.

Another cause of trouble was the Moravian religious language. If the Brethren did not preach novel doctrines they certainly preached old doctrines in a novel way. They called Jesus the Man of Smart; talked a great deal about Blood and Wounds; spoke of themselves as Poor Sinners; and described their own condition as Sinners.h.i.+p and Sinnerlikeness. To the orthodox Churchman this language seemed absurd. He did not know what it meant; he did not find it in the Bible; and, therefore, he concluded that the Brethren's doctrine was unscriptural and unsound.

Another cause of trouble was the Brethren's doctrine of justification by faith alone. Of all the charges brought against them the most serious and the most persistent was the charge that they despised good works.

They were denounced as Antinomians. Again and again, by the best of men, this insulting term was thrown at their heads. They taught, it was said, the immoral doctrine that Christ had done everything for the salvation of mankind; that the believer had only to believe; that he need not obey the commandments; and that such things as duties did not exist.

At Windsor lived a gentleman named Sir John Thorold. He was one of the earliest friends of the Moravians; he had often attended meetings at Hutton's house; he was an upright, conscientious, intelligent Christian; and yet he accused the Brethren of teaching "that there were no duties in the New Testament." Gilbert Tennent brought the very same accusation.

"The Moravian notion about the law," he said, "is a mystery of detestable iniquity; and, indeed, this seems to be the mainspring of their unreasonable, anti-evangelical, and licentious religion." But the severest critic of the Brethren was John Wesley. He attacked them in a "Letter to the Moravian Church," and had that letter printed in his Journal. He attacked them again in his "Short View of the Difference between the Moravian Brethren, lately in England, and the Rev. Mr. John and Charles Wesley." He attacked them again in his "A Dialogue between an Antinomian and his Friend"; and in each of these clever and biting productions his chief charge against them was that they taught Antinomian principles, despised good works, and taught that Christians had nothing to do but believe.

"Do you coolly affirm," he asked, "that this is only imputed to a Believer, and that he has none at all of this holiness in him? Is temperance imputed only to him that is a drunkard still? or chast.i.ty to her that goes on in wh.o.r.edom?"

He accused the Brethren of carrying out their principles; he attacked their personal character; and, boiling with righteous indignation, he denounced them as "licentious spirits and men of careless lives."

As the Brethren, therefore, were now being fiercely attacked, the question arose, what measures, if any, they should take in self-defence.

At first they contented themselves with gentle protests. As they had been accused of disloyalty to the throne, James Hutton, Benjamin Ingham, and William Bell, in the name of all the English societies connected with the Brethren's Church, drew up an address to the King, went to see him in person, and a.s.sured him that they were loyal subjects and hated Popery and popish pretenders {April 27th, 1744.}. As they had been accused of attacking the Anglican Church, two Brethren called on Gibson, Bishop of London, and a.s.sured him that they had committed no such crime.

For the rest, however, the Brethren held their tongues. At a Conference in London they consulted the Lot; and the Lot decided that they should not reply to Gilbert Tennent. For the same reason, probably, they also decided to give no reply to John Wesley.

Meanwhile, however, an event occurred which roused the Brethren to action. At Shekomeko, in Dutchess County, New York, they had established a flouris.h.i.+ng Indian congregation; and now, the a.s.sembly of New York, stirred up by some liquor sellers who were losing their business, pa.s.sed an insulting Act, declaring that "all vagrant preachers, Moravians, and disguised Papists," should not be allowed to preach to the Indians unless they first took the oaths of allegiance and abjuration {1744.}.

James Hutton was boiling with fury. If this Act had applied to all preachers of the Gospel he would not have minded so much; but the other denominations--Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists and Quakers--were all specially exempted; and the loyal Moravians were bracketed together with vagrant preachers and Papists in disguise. He regarded the Act as an insult. He wrote to Zinzendorf on the subject.

"This," he said, "is the work of Presbyterian firebrands." If an Act like this could be pa.s.sed in America, who knew what might not happen soon in England? "We ought," he continued, "to utilize this or some other favourable opportunity for bringing our cause publicly before Parliament."

Now was the time, thought the fiery Hutton, to define the position of the Brethren's Church in England. He went to Marienborn to see the Count; a Synod met {1745.}; his proposal was discussed; and the Synod appointed Abraham von Gersdorf, the official "Delegate to Kings," to appeal to Lord Granville, and the Board of Trade and Plantations, for protection in the Colonies. Lord Granville was gracious. He informed the deputation that though the Act could not be repealed at once the Board of Trade would recommend the repeal as soon as legally possible; and the upshot of the matter was that the Act became a dead letter.

Next year Zinzendorf came to England, and began to do the best he could to destroy the separate Moravian Church in this country {1746.}. If the Count could only have had his way, he would now have made every Moravian in England return to the Anglican Church. He was full of his "Tropus"

idea. He wished to work his idea out in England; he called the English Brethren to a Synod (Sept. 13-16), and persuaded them to pa.s.s a scheme whereby the English branch of the Brethren's Church would be taken over entirely by the Church of England. It was one of the most curious schemes he ever devised. At their Sunday services the Brethren henceforward were to use the Book of Common Prayer; their ministers were to be ordained by Anglican and Moravian Bishops conjointly; he himself was to be the head of this Anglican-Moravian Church; and thus the English Moravians would be grafted on to the Church of England. For the second time, therefore, the Count was trying to destroy the Moravian Church. But here, to his surprise, he met an unexpected obstacle. He had forgotten that it takes two to make a marriage. He proposed the union in form to Archbishop Potter; he pleaded the case with all the skill at his command; and the Archbishop promptly rejected the proposal, and the marriage never came off.

As Zinzendorf, therefore, was baffled in this endeavour, he had now to come down from his pedestal and try a more practical plan {1747.}; and, acting on the sage advice of Thomas Penn, proprietor of Pennsylvania, and General Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, he resolved to appeal direct to Parliament for protection in the Colonies. As Oglethorpe himself was a member of the House of Commons, he was able to render the Brethren signal service. He had no objection to fighting himself, and even defended duelling,[124] but he championed the cause of the Brethren.

Already, by an Act in 1740, the Quakers had been freed from taking the oath in all our American Colonies; already, further, by another Act (1743), the privilege of affirming had been granted in Pennsylvania, not only to Quakers, but to all foreign Protestants; and now Oglethorpe moved in the House of Commons that the rule existing in Pennsylvania should henceforth apply to all American Colonies. If the Moravians, he argued, were only given a little more encouragement, instead of being worried about oaths and military service, they would settle in larger numbers in America and increase the prosperity of the colonies. He wrote to the Board of Trade and Plantations; his friend, Thomas Penn, endorsed his statements; and the result was that the new clause was pa.s.sed, and all foreign Protestants in American Colonies--the Moravians being specially mentioned--were free to affirm instead of taking the oath.

But this Act was of no use to the English Brethren. The great question at issue was, what standing were the Brethren to hold in England? On the one hand, as members of a foreign Protestant Church they were ent.i.tled to religious liberty; and yet, on the other hand, they were practically treated as Dissenters, and had been compelled to have all their buildings licensed. As they were still accused of holding secret dangerous principles, they now drew up another "Declaration," had it printed, sent it to the offices of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Master of the Rolls, and inserted it in the leading newspapers. At all costs, pleaded the Brethren, let us have a public inquiry. "If any man of undoubted sense and candour," they said, "will take the pains upon himself to fix the accusations against us in their real point of view, hitherto unattainable by the Brethren and perhaps the public too, then we will answer to the expectations of the public, as free and directly as may be expected from honest subjects of the const.i.tution of these realms." The appeal led to nothing; the man of sense and candour never appeared; and still the suffering Brethren groaned under all sorts of vague accusation.

At last, however, Zinzendorf himself came to the rescue of his Brethren, rented Northampton House in Bloomsbury Square,[125] and brought the whole matter to a head. For the second time he took the advice of Oglethorpe and Thomas Penn; and a deputation was now appointed to frame a pet.i.tion to Parliament that the Brethren in America be exempted, not merely from the oath, but also from military service.

As General Oglethorpe was now in England, he gladly championed the Brethren's cause, presented the pet.i.tion in the House of Commons, and opened the campaign by giving an account of the past history of the Brethren {Feb. 20th, 1749.}. For practical purposes this information was important. If the House knew nothing else about the Brethren it knew that they were no sect of mushroom growth. And then Oglethorpe informed the House how the Brethren, already, in bygone days had been kindly treated by England; how Amos Comenius had appealed to the Anglican Church; how Archbishop Sancroft and Bishop Compton had published a pathetic account of their sufferings; and how George I., by the advice of Archbishop Wake, had issued letters patent for their relief. But the most effective part of his speech was the part in which he spoke from personal knowledge. "In the year 1735," he said "they were disquieted in Germany, and about twenty families went over with me to Georgia. They were industrious, patient under the difficulties of a new settlement, laborious beyond what could have been expected. They gave much of their time to prayer, but that hindered not their industry. Prayer was to them a diversion after labour. I mention this because a vulgar notion has prevailed that they neglected labour for prayer." They had spent, he said, 100,000 in various industries; they had withdrawn already in large numbers from Georgia because they were compelled to bear arms; and if that colony was to prosper again the Brethren should be granted the privilege they requested, and thus be encouraged to return. For what privilege, after all, did the Brethren ask? For the n.o.ble privilege of paying money instead of fighting in battle. The more these Brethren were encouraged, said he, the more the Colonies would prosper; he proposed that the pet.i.tion be referred to a Committee, and Velters Cornwall, member for Herefords.h.i.+re, seconded the motion.